The Day's Good Deed
Category: Local...
Posted Friday, September 22, 2006 at 11:02 AM [GMT-6]

Abbye and I rescued a lost dog today, the cute little Sheltie shown below who goes by the name of Mollie.

We were nearing the end of our morning walk, just a block or so from home, when I spotted Mollie wandering toward us, looking a bit tentative. I didn't recognize her from the neighborhood, but I could see that she was wearing a collar and tag. She was obviously curious about Abbye, so I squatted down and whistled and she trotted right over. While she sniffed at Ab (and Ab sniffed back, at least in her general vicinity), I tried to make out the phone number scratched onto the immunization tag on her collar. Holding her collar and Abbye's leash with one hand, I dialed my cell phone with the other, and, of course, got a wrong number. I re-read the tag, redialed, and got an answering machine. At that point, I wasn't prepared to leave a message. I needed a plan, first.

We walked home, Abbye in tow and Mollie following along at a respectful pace. As we walked into the front yard, a car pulled up to the curb next door and my neighbor got out and began telling me how she'd locked herself out of her house, how her husband was out of town (isn't that how it always works?) and that she was waiting on the locksmith. I explained why I now had two dogs, and the two of us were able to coax Mollie into the backyard.

She seemed content with the situation, so I dialed the number again and left a message on the machine. Within twenty minutes, my call was returned, by Mollie's owner's mother. Forty-five minutes after that, the dog was reunited with her owner, a Hummer-driving young lady who expressed amazement that Mollie had wandered so far, so quickly. As it turned out, she'd gone missing just this morning, but was several miles from home, and had crossed at least two of the busiest thoroughfares in Midland -- probably during rush hour -- to get to our neighborhood. Someone was looking out for Miss Mollie.

The whole episode put a big kink in my morning plans, but I figure they weren't that important after all.

Abbye's still wondering what happened to her temporary playmate, though. Oh, and my neighbor did get back into her house; it took the locksmith all of ten seconds to pick the front door lock.